


Black Machinery

by saltedpin



Category: Dissidia: Final Fantasy
Genre: Breathplay, Community: let_it_loose_df, Dubious Consent, M/M, divergent canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-21
Updated: 2013-07-21
Packaged: 2017-12-20 21:57:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/892347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltedpin/pseuds/saltedpin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Response to a request on the kinkmeme for breathplay, any pairing.</p><p>The events of cycle 012 have yielded unexpected results. Diverges from canon for 013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Black Machinery

**Author's Note:**

> Diverges from canon for 013: after Team Can(n)on Fodder get themselves killed, they are brought back by Chaos rather than going into deep freeze or wherever they go. Hence, Dark!Kain and Dark!Lightning. WoL has some memories.
> 
> Thank you so much to Poisonstrawberries for the help, and Apathy for the beta :)
> 
> Title is taken from an And One song.

The corridor is pitch black, but Garland knows it well enough by now that he doesn’t need light to find his way along it. The darkness may have been oppressive had he not been so utterly used to it – it is not so dark as some places he has been, nowhere near, and the idea that he has anything to fear in this realm, or _any_ realm, is enough to make him laugh. 

Garland pauses before he opens the door; no light shines from the crack at the bottom, and he will be alone, as he hoped. This place, this dungeon in the bowels of Chaos’ fortress, is not his first choice for such things, but Garland can accept it, for now at least.

Dissidia’s internal logic thwarts any attempts to escape the brutality of its cycles. He does not know why Cosmos never thought to warn them of the possible outcome of their actions, and in truth, he does not care. Perhaps she never realised herself what could happen: that the warriors who thought they had found a way to bring their fate to heel were in fact only ensuring they were moving to another cog within the black machinery of the cycles.

In falling to the Manikins, they put themselves out of Cosmos’ reach.

But not out of Chaos’, and not out of the darkness that he exudes, which swallows up memories of former friends and comrades and spits them back out as twisted, unrecognisable parodies of their former selves. 

He would find it amusing if it weren’t so pathetic, the dragoon’s futile attempts to get back what he believes he has lost: all the external trappings of honour, of the fine name he imagines has been taken from him. He doesn’t remember the reasons why he cut down all his comrades in that other time: only that he did it, and he did it at the instigation of someone he had thought was a friend. _As if anything that truly measures the worth of man could be parted from him by another,_ Garland thinks, smiling without humour behind the cold face of his helm. _As if any man worth more than dust would allow his sense of place to be destroyed like this._ Name, honour, redemption – he has seen too much to believe such things have any meaning, or that they are any protection against fate. 

Garland thinks that Kain would have learned this, at least, by now. But no – instead he continues in the pursuit of his lost honour, as if any such thing exists – these ephemera that guarantee nothing and mean even less. 

Garland almost snarls – the dragoon is a fool. But the woman is simply insane.

She at least is motivated by a force that Garland understands: revenge, that blackest and brightest of sins. She at least holds no illusions about regaining what she has lost. In her eyes Garland sees, when he cares to look, only the desire to force the Warrior of Light into the same position she herself has been in by what she believes was his hand; to give him a taste of the fear and pain she has experienced. 

And so: when they finally found him, the one they blamed for what they believed were their common ills, they decided to take him alive.

The room is just as dark as the corridor when he finally pushes the door open; he hears the sound of the Warrior of Light shifting, and, his eyes being so used to the dark, sees the vague shape of his white hair as his head turns towards the sound of his entrance.

“Kain?” 

Garland grimaces. It is ridiculous that the Warrior still calls for this man, even after everything that has happened, as if there is anything left of whatever he once imagined was between them – as if the dragoon is the same fool he once imagined he knew. 

_But fools call to their fellows,_ Garland thinks, and they cling to each other like drowning rats, looking for whatever solace they might find in their shared delusions. 

“No.” At the sound of his voice he hears the Warrior shift again, sees his head move in the darkness, his hair a pale shadow. And for all that the Warrior of Light had called to Kain, Garland hears him swallow and his breath quicken.

“What do you want?” the Warrior asks, and Garland almost laughs. 

For a moment, Garland wonders what he thinks of during these hours when he is sunk in darkness: if he mourns for the friends he thought he knew, or if he plots an escape. If he tries to remember his name, or something else that might call his past back to him. 

In the end, Garland decides it does not matter. 

The glow of the lamp he lights barely reaches the corner of the room where the Warrior kneels – arms outstretched, his wrists tied, knees splayed – but it is enough to make him blink and turn his face slightly away. Garland cannot help but curl his lip at the irony.

Moving across the room, Garland lowers himself into the chair in the corner, leaning back and gazing down at the man before him. The Warrior of Light does not immediately look up at him, but as the silence wears on, Garland sees his eyes flick up to his face before darting down between his legs – then he glances away once more, knowing that Garland has seen it, but unable to stop his tongue from running quickly over his lower lip all the same.

Garland almost smiles. After a moment, he leans forward, resting his elbow against his thigh.

"Tell me," Garland says, his voice loud in the silence, even to his own ears, "if I untied you now, left this room and did not close the door, would you attempt to escape?"

Confusion crosses the Warrior's face, and he opens and shuts his mouth twice before answering. "What do you mean?"  
"It is a simple enough question," Garland says, not bothering to hide the smile in his voice. "If given the opportunity, would you leave?"

Garland watches as the Warrior swallows, obviously wonders if he is walking into some kind of trap. He can almost see it on the Warrior's face when gives up trying to puzzle it out. "Of course," he eventually says. "But you –"

"Would you?" Garland cuts him off. "You would leave your friends here, alone in their madness?"

Garland watches as his words hit home – the look of surprise and then mild fear on the Warrior of Light's face as the implication sinks in. "Of course I wouldn't – they are my _friends_. I'd return to –"

"To be taken in chains once more, as you are now." Garland leans back again, settling into the high leather back of the chair. "Even you must know that these are the only choices available to you. Save yourself and abandon them. Or stay with them here, and lose yourself." 

The Warrior drops his eyes for a moment, before looking back up at Garland. "They will come to know me again," he eventually says, his voice quiet. "They will – "

Garland cuts him off with a laugh. "And how will you bring about this realisation?" he asks, again relishing the look of utter confusion on the Warrior's face. He leans forward once more, softening his voice. "How many times must that miserable dragoon prove he has no memory of you? How many lashes must that woman lay across your back?" 

Garland crouches down out of the chair, leaning forward and catching the Warrior's jaw between his thumb and fingers, lifting his head. 

"There is no one here who knows you but me," he says, feeling the twitch of the muscles in the Warrior's neck as he tries to pull back. "I see you clearly – as I have always seen you. Have you, in your heart, ever doubted it?"

The Warrior tries to look defiant, but Garland can see the foundations of his self-belief beginning to crumble. He smiles, even though he knows the Warrior of Light cannot see it.

"You believe you can bring them back to the light," Garland continues, "but you are wrong, as you always have been. There is no light in them for you to call to." Garland slides his thumb between the Warrior's lips, and encounters no resistance. "There never was."

The Warrior simply stares at him, allowing Garland to work the pad of his thumb over the soft surface of his tongue.

"You cannot save them," Garland says as he hooks his thumb down, levering open the Warrior's jaw. "Just as you could not save me."

Garland stares down, watching the Warrior's eyes flicker as he casts about for a retort, any kind of response – as if there is anything that he can say that would not be entirely laughable in light of his current situation, Garland's hand mere inches from his throat while his own are tied; unresisting when the fingers of Garland's other hand creep over his thigh, curling into the crook of his knee and pulling him forward. 

Garland watches the Warrior swallow, and wonders if he remembers when things had been different. The Warrior had always fought him, sometimes to exhaustion – but Garland had always known then that even as the Warrior had swung his blade at Garland's form, tried sincerely to land a killing blow, that it was not _him_ the Warrior was fighting, but himself. He fought only so that he could tell himself later that he had fought, that he had not wanted this. It had been written on his face as clear as day, and even as Garland had parried blow after blow, he knew that this was nothing compared to the battle the Warrior was carrying on against himself. 

Garland had been willing to indulge him then as he is willing to indulge him now – the things the Warrior believes are naught but ashes, just the same as the ideals of honour and pride the dragoon believes he has lost or failed. 

The only thing that matters, Garland knows, is power, and whether the Warrior realises it or not, he began to give up his own the first day he ever laid eyes on Garland. If Garland has any complaint, it is that it has all been almost too easy.

He almost laughs now when the Warrior of Light gasps as he pulls his legs up, bending his knees over his hips and pulling his buttocks against his groin.

“Garland –“ the Warrior of Light begins to say, his tone reaching for defiance, but leaving his lips almost as a plea. Garland says nothing, does nothing -- he simply lets the Warrior feel the thickening of his blood against him, the steadily growing hardness that Garland thinks he must know almost as well as his own. _No, better,_ Garland thinks – he has always believed that the Warrior is a near-stranger to his own body: how else could he have been so easily persuaded to give it over to the man he has always been told is his enemy? If he knows anything about himself and what he responds to, it is because Garland has taught him it.

He doesn't need to do anything now – Garland simply watches as the Warrior moves himself almost helplessly against him, the rebelliousness in his eyes evaporating and replaced with the desperate longing that Garland knows so well. He wonders whether the man's mania for Cosmos was a direct result of the sway that Garland held over him – to balance the pull he felt towards him with something he deluded himself into believing was equally powerful. Garland almost smiles, then – the Warrior must have known that Cosmos could never compare, could never give him the things that Garland gave him. It was not to Cosmos that he had wandered during the darkest time of night – it had always been to him, and, no matter how hard he may have fought, he had always given in to him in the end.

The Warrior of Light whimpers when Garland wraps his hand around his cock, the sound so pathetic that Garland almost laughs. The Warrior must have known the truth of Garland's words – _there is no one here who knows you but me._ What other truth is there, Garland thinks, but what he tells him is true? For a moment, he simply allows the Warrior to thrust into his palm, so conditioned now to his touch that Garland almost need do nothing at all. Watching the Warrior of Light’s face, he leans forward, flicking the pale circle of his nipple with the clawed thumb of his glove, smiling when the Warrior’s head falls back slightly, his mouth opening in an unstifled moan. 

Drawing back, Garland ignores the groan that escapes the man’s lips when he releases his hardening cock. Garland pulls the Warrior's right leg up, resting his ankle against his shoulder, and then slowly rocks forward – sliding his cock against the Warrior's buttocks, letting him feel the length, the hardness, without even beginning to penetrate. He watches as the Warrior's hips jerk up, trying to find purchase, his back bending, Garland's hands on his hip and around his ankle and his wrists bound to the wall restricting his movement. 

"Tell me, Warrior," Garland says softly as the man moves against him, "did you honestly ever believe you could save anyone?"

The Warrior's eyes open, and for a moment Garland smiles at the look of petty defiance in them. "I did – I saved them –"

"You call _this_ saved?" Garland asks, his hand leaving the Warrior's hip for a moment to indicate the room. "This place where they have lost all, been reduced to _this?_ " He savours the look of panicked realisation that spreads over the Warrior of Light's face. " _This_ is what your light led them to," he says, pulling the Warrior up, feeling the entrance of his body against the head of his cock. " _This_ is how you saved them. They would not be here but for you."

If the Warrior opens his mouth to offer some rebuttal, it is lost as Garland pushes past the ring of his muscle in one quick thrust, sinking himself in the throbbing, living warmth of the Warrior's body. Garland has to hold back a groan, as he always does at this first penetration – there is nothing, nothing that compares to this, no matter how many times he may do it. The claws that hook into his spine feel like madness as they tear their way up to his brain; the tight heat of the Warrior's body holds him like a glove, seemingly trying to pull him deeper even when he is as far in as he can go.

Garland often wonders what the Warrior thinks at these times, if he is capable of allowing himself to think anything at all. His eyes are half-lidded, his mouth dropped open – as Garland pulls back slightly before rocking forward again, his eyes snap shut, and his arms jerk against their bonds. Garland feels his own breath curling against his face, trapped inside the metal of his helm, heating the cold surface of its interior. He is slow, for a time, allowing the Warrior to feel the drag and push of his hips, savouring the sensation of every ridge of the man’s body around him. The sound the Warrior makes when Garland makes his first hard thrust is almost a sob, and it does nothing but send fire down his veins, spur him to further movement. 

His thrusts turn brutal, and he watches as the Warrior squirms up, his back arching, drawing his bottom lip between his teeth in either pain or pleasure – Garland does not know or care which. The clench of the Warrior's muscles around him in reaction seems to wash over his whole body, sends white heat licking over his nerves. Garland has never cared to think too long over why, but if he has ever been so utterly taken over by pleasure with any other person, he has long since forgotten them. The sight of the Warrior's face, his fingers curled over themselves, the muscles in his shoulders and stomach tautening with his thrusts – it never fails to make his blood surge in a way he had long believed only battle could induce, and which he has not sought to find again. 

The Warrior's body arches to meet his as he buries himself, his fingers tightening against his hip and around his ankle, and the Warrior lets out a cry when Garland bends his knee forward, forcing it down to meet his shoulder. For a moment, he almost slows, thinking to draw this out. But then the Warrior's eyes open a crack, and the pleading desperation Garland sees in them is almost enough to undo him.

" _Please_ – " the Warrior manages to get out, the muscles in this throat straining against his skin. "Garland, I – _please_ –"

Garland almost has to laugh. He can hear the unspoken words behind the Warrior's request -- _please make me forget_ – if only for a moment, what he has done to his friends, what world he brought them to. The irony is almost too much – this man has spent his entire existence trying to remember, only to find that perhaps, he wishes he never had.

His hand leaves the Warrior of Light's hip and curls around his throat, pressing his fingers into the pulse that flutters in his neck. For a moment, fear spreads across the Warrior's face, before Garland shoves into him once more, and watches as all thoughts flee his head. Even as he feels the familiar gathering in his groin, Garland cannot help but detach himself, watch as the Warrior's facial expression mists over, his eyes seeming to stare at something beyond Garland's shoulder. Garland has done this before, and always it draws out of him this strange fascination – one that he indulges even at the expense of giving himself up entirely to his own climax – of watching the Warrior slowly sink into some interior space that Garland wonders, truly, if he has ever managed to reach. _Even so,_ Garland thinks, as he watches the Warrior’s breath die in his throat, unable to leave his lips, _even so_ – when the Warrior goes to ground like this, it is only he that can drive him there, and he alone. 

The Warrior makes a small, choked sound as Garland buries himself twice more, then his body goes rigid, his eyes sliding shut. His leg jerks against Garland's grip, and for a moment, Garland draws his fingers tighter around his throat, almost to the point where he's doing damage, just to emphasise – to the Warrior and to himself – that he _can._

Whatever the case, the Warrior does not seem to notice, and does not react when Garland withdraws his hand, leaving dark red indents in the pale skin of his throat. He barely has to touch the Warrior's cock before he comes, spilling into Garland's palm as he has done countless times in the past, crying out incoherently, his voice hoarse. 

Garland's back arches as he feels the dark pull of everything in his body bending towards one point, before his orgasm tears through him, as powerful as it always is, shaking him down to his core, and for a moment at least, emptying him of thought, of feeling, of everything except the sensation of engulfing pleasure and heat. 

Drained, he braces himself against the wall to which the Warrior's wrists are still tied, watching the face of the man below him – head turned to the side, his eyes half shut, breath heavy in his chest, the marks of Garland's fingers still livid on his throat. After a moment, Garland reaches down, pinching his chin between thumb and forefinger and turning his face to look at him. 

His eyes don’t seem to register him, and, with a noise of disgust, Garland pulls out, letting the Warrior drop to the ground. He does not make a sound as Garland rises, turning towards the door. 

"Remember what you have done, Warrior of Light," Garland sneers, half-turning to go. The Warrior's eyes flicking in his direction are the only indication that he has heard him, and Garland can only let out a cold laugh before he walks away.


End file.
